


The One Where Draco and Ron Get Lost in a Dark Damp Cave

by misura



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Canon, Being Lost, Community: springkink, M/M, Sharing Body Heat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-09
Updated: 2007-04-09
Packaged: 2017-10-23 14:01:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/251102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ron isn't having a good day, clearly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The One Where Draco and Ron Get Lost in a Dark Damp Cave

After five hours (or, okay, maybe it'd just been twenty minutes - but they'd been a _long_ twenty minutes) of walking in front of Draco bloody Malfoy trying to navigate a system of caves that seemed to have been designed by Fred and George, Ron decided he'd had enough.

Sure, everybody'd warned him this'd be _hard_ and that 'sacrifices' would have to be made for 'the good cause', and that maybe he'd get killed (funny how they'd mentioned that last in the speech, only after they'd already gotten most of the last-year students cheering and yelling 'Down with You-know-who!' - and how sad was it they were all still afraid to say the name 'Voldemort' anyway?). Ron'd been prepared for that. He'd been ready for weeks of eating lousy food (knowing his mother'd find a way to sneak him a few 'snacks' every now and then, and knowing that his mother's idea of a 'snack' could keep about half a dozen people fed for three days). He'd even been ready to have Hermione lecture him daily about cleanliness and orderliness, and how it was very irresponsible of him to have brought his collection of Muggle-produced comics, instead of his study-books.

However, he'd _not_ been ready to end up in a cave with Draco bloody Malfoy, after a rather unpleasant incident that had ended in a hasty exit via a trap-door in the cellars of a castle that was supposed to contain some kind of sacred relic - Merlin's tea-cosy, or something silly like that; Ron hadn't really been paying attention during the briefing, figuring Draco would insist on briefing all of them at least a dozen more times during the mission, just because Snape (prejudiced creep that he was) had assigned him team-leader.

"Listen, mate," Ron said at last, deciding he might as well get this out in the open, "it's _not_ my fault that old man turned out to be a Death Eater. I mean, how was _I_ supposed to know?"

"I'm _not_ your 'mate', Weasley," said Draco coldly. "In either sense of the word."

"What the - " Ron sputtered. They were stuck in a cave that just seemed to go on and on, with no food, two malfunctioning wands, and their only source of light a pocket-torch Ron had gotten as a birthday-present from his dad, which was Muggle-made and therefore ran on batteries that might run out any moment. In other words, they were in deep trouble, and Draco wanted to insult him some more? "Not that it's any of your business, but me and Harry don't have that kind of relationship."

"I suppose even Potter does have _some_ taste," mused Draco. "Is there any reason why we've stopped walking by the way?"

"Because you're a bloody idiot and I'd like to see if I could smack some sense into you," muttered Ron.

"As you clearly will get us lost soon, I propose _I_ will take the lead," said Draco, either not having heard Ron, or deciding to ignore him.

"Oh yeah? Why's that? Because being a Malfoy makes you so much more smarter and capable than normal people?" Ron sneered. Not being a Malfoy, he wasn't very good at it, but since it was dark, it didn't make much of a difference.

"You really _are_ stupid, aren't you?" commented Draco. "In the briefing, they said the only exit to these caves was to the north. So that's where we're headed. In the exact same direction _you_ were headed, before you insisted on making a scene."

Ron had, in fact, not known he'd been walking north, or that that was where the exit was supposed to be. Hermione was probably right when she scolded him for not paying enough attention to what was happening around him sometimes - then again, it wasn't like _Hermione_ had three big brothers and a little sister to worry about.

"Besides, it's not like being a Malfoy's all that great."

Since Ron was holding the pocket-torch, and since its light had grown rather weak over the past years (Harry had suggested it was because the batteries were 'running low' whatever that was supposed to mean, not offering any suggestion as to how Ron might get them to 'run high' again, which probably meant Harry didn't know either), he could see Draco fairly well, while Draco probably could barely see him at all. Draco had turned while he'd been talking, and looking at his face, Ron decided he looked paler than unusual. Or perhaps just a _different_ kind of pale - not pale like someone who thinks he's too good to get a tan by spending time in the sun, playing and having fun, but pale like someone who's very tired and about to either fall over or fall apart.

Ron's first reaction was annoyance (not only had he gotten himself stuck with Draco, no, it had to be a worn-out and potentially worse than useless Draco, too). His next one was satisfaction (ha! so this war even got to the Malfoys and the Snapes of this world - well, he hadn't seen Snape look tired yet, but that was probably because Snape was so bloody good at pretending to be things he wasn't).

Sympathy came in a reluctant third, mostly because Ron knew (even if Draco didn't seem to) that they weren't at Hogwarts anymore - _there_ , it was okay to start a foodfight with someone because you didn't like them, or even because you were pretty sure you wouldn't shed a tear at their funeral. Here, in the real world, Ron knew things were different. Sure, he still didn't like Draco, but Draco was on the right side.

"Are you all right?" asked Ron, knowing it was a stupid question.

"No, if you must know," said Draco. "Now, can we get moving?"

"Wait a second - how do you know which direction north is?" Ron protested, admitting (he knew) that _he_ hadn't known and had, in fact, been likely to get them both lost if Draco hadn't gotten on his nerves and stated _he_ would walk in front.

"There's a compass on my wand," explained Draco, without much patience.

"Huh," said Ron. Wand-extensions had been all the rage during their last year at Hogwarts - most of them completely impractical and without any use whatsoever. Ginny had the interchangeable-picture-frame one - with four pictures of Harry, one of Hermione, Ron and Harry, and one of her family. (Ron suspected it was malfunctioning, since he'd never seen it show any picture other than Harry's, and Harry never did anything except smile.) Fred and George had gotten so many of them their wands were near-impossible to carry around safely - they'd gotten tired of the novelty after two months and sold all of their extensions after having made a few 'improvements' to some of them. Ron'd have thought Draco'd rather have killed himself than to go along in something so vulgar as a popular trend.

 

"Are you _sure_ that if you turn it off now, you can turn it on again, too?" Draco asked, staring at the pocket-torch with all the suspicion of an old-fashioned wizard for Muggle technology.

"Yes, I am," sighed Ron. "Just trust me for once, okay?"

"It's not a matter of trust." Draco frowned at the pocket-torch. "It's a matter of not knowing anything about the way those Muggle-gadgets work. _Your_ father might spend his days studying them, but for me, this is the first time I've actually seen one this close. And you said yourself it was weakening and that you didn't know how to fix it."

"What I _do_ know is that if we keep it on while we sleep, it might die for good. Yeah, yeah, it's not alive to start with, I know," Ron added, noticing the dubious expression on Draco's face. "It's like this, okay: when my dad got this thing, there were maybe ten hours of light in it. Now, it's more like there's only one or two hours left. So if we switch it off and keep the light from getting out, we can sleep and when we wake up, we'll _still_ have those one or two hours left."

"How did they get the light in there in the first place?"

"I don't know." Ron sighed. When (or if) they got back, he'd really need to have a long talk with Harry about this. Or write a letter to his dad, although Ron was all too aware his father wasn't quite the expert on Muggle-technology he fancied himself to be.

"Nothing to do but go to sleep and hope the best of it, then." Draco didn't sound very happy about it.

"You got that right, mate." Ron switched off the pocket-torch, realizing a little too late he'd just handed Draco an excuse to start another argument.

Draco remained quiet though, long enough for Ron to assume he'd fallen asleep and to feel a little jealous - it was _cold_ and the one blanket Ron had brought along didn't help anymore than the warming-spell he'd had Hermione teach him a few weeks ago. If it hadn't been for the sheer good luck of Ron having brought the pocket-torch and Draco turning out to own one of the few non-magical wand-extensions, Ron'd have felt sure someone had cursed him with bad luck. As it was, he estimated their chances of getting out of this alive a little better than 'sucky'.

"Are you cold?"

Pride struggled with hope (hey, if Draco carried a compass, maybe he had an extra blanket, too). The politeness his mother had despaired of ever being able to teach him won.

"Yeah," said Ron.

"We could share our blankets, I suppose. Two should be enough to keep us both warm," said Draco.

Not quite what Ron had hoped to hear, if truth be told. In fact, ending up sharing a bed, no matter how undeserving of the term, with Draco Malfoy hadn't even been in his top five-hundred of things Ron supposed might happen to him during this war.

"Sure. Why not?" Grabbing the pocket-torch with his left hand and clutching his blanket and clothes with his right one, Ron crawled in the general direction of Draco's voice. "After all, it's not like I'm homosexual or anything." Although he suspected Draco thought he was, judging by the distance Draco'd put between his and Ron's sleeping place.

"I am," said Draco.

"Oh. Ah."

"You know," Draco said, "there's a saying about all cats looking grey in the dark, but I actually can hardly see you at all. We really must do this again in a place with actual lighting some time."


End file.
